SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Tokyo reports most daily Covid-19 cases in six months as Olympics loom:

TOKYO (REUTERS) - Tokyo reported the highest number of new Covid-19 cases in almost six months on Wednesday (July 14), with the Olympics due to open in the capital in just nine days.

The city government said there were 1,149 new cases, the highest daily tally since Jan 22, adding to evidence that a new fifth wave of infections is under way, driven by more infectious virus variants and a low vaccination rate.

Amid rising cases, the government declared renewed state of emergency for Tokyo and surrounding prefectures last week and Olympics organisers announced that no fans would be allowed at events in those areas.

[...] Health experts had warned that seasonal factors, increased mobility, and the spread of variants would lead to a rebound this summer. Kyoto University professor Yuki Furuse earlier projected that new daily cases in Tokyo could rise to 1,000 in July and 2,000 in August, potentially maxing out hospital beds in the capital region.

[...] Just 31 per cent of people in Japan have received at least one Covid-19 inoculation dose, among the lowest rate among wealthy countries, according to a Reuters tracker.

[...] A coronavirus cluster at a Japanese hotel where dozens of Brazilian Olympic team members are staying has raised new concern about infections at what the world's top Olympics official promised on Wednesday would be "historic" Games.

Current statistics from Johns Hopkins and Worldometers.com for Japan.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

California breaks 1 GW energy storage milestone:

[California] regulators noted that the "peak hour of [electricity demand in] the year occurs consistently in September... within hour ending 17 (based on P.S.T. or 6:00 p.m. P.D.T.). By 2022, the peak shifts to hour ending 18."

[...] In 2020, that shortfall totaled around 6,000 MWh over three hours. In 2021, regulators added an hour and increased the amount of shortfall within each one-hour window, bringing the total shortfall to 14,400 MWh. That number expanded again in 2021 to 15,400 MWh of "missing energy" over four hours.

[...] Fortunately, 2,000 MW of energy storage capacity is coming online by August 1, per the California Public Utility Commission. Much of this capacity will have four hours of battery energy sitting behind it, nearly 8,000 MWh in total.

[...] One of the first examples of a huge charging event occurred on July 14 at 9:15 AM, and was brought to our attention by California energy data geek Joe Deely. Here's what it looked like:

[...] Two of the world's largest lithium ion batteries contributed to these capacity values, and backed up the grid during the flex event.

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV6wO_UVfWo&t=269s

LS Power Energizes Largest Battery Storage Project in the World"
At 300MW / 1,200MWh, the world's largest battery storage system so far is up and running.

Real-time tracking: California ISO - Supply.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

United Airlines to buy 100, 19-seat electric planes from Heart Aerospace:

[REUTERS] United Airlines (UAL.O) said on Tuesday it would buy 100 19-seat ES-19 electric planes from Swedish start-up Heart Aerospace, as the U.S. carrier eyes battery-powered aircraft for regional routes.

It is the latest in a series of such "innovation-related" announcements by United as major airlines come under pressure to cut emissions.

The U.S. carrier's venture funding arm said in a release it is also investing an undisclosed amount in the company with Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Mesa Airlines (MESA.O).

United would not disclose the value of the order, which is conditional on the aircraft's meeting safety, business and operating requirements.

Mesa would buy an additional 100 ES-19s, subject to similar requirements, which can fly customers up to 250 miles.

The plane will enter service as soon as 2026.

United could use the aircraft to connect hubs like Chicago O'Hare International Airport to smaller routes. Some of these routes have been cut by legacy carriers because they are too expensive.

Original Submission

Nearly 800 People Believed to Have Died in Northwest Heat Wave

upstart writes:

Nearly 800 people believed to have died in Northwest heat wave:

The death count has inched upward since the mercury hit 108 degrees in Seattle two weeks ago. The heat wave is now one of the deadliest weather-related events in Washington state history.

At least 25 people died in King County, and 91 statewide. The numbers could still rise, however, as people are still being found in their homes, and others haven't recovered from dehydration. The heat wave lasted between June 26 and July 6.

In British Columbia, there were 580 more deaths than expected for this time of year. That's three times the number of deaths the province normally sees each week, according to the B.C. Coroners Service, and reporting from the CBC. In Oregon, at least 116 people died from the heat, according to The Associated Press.

That brings the death toll in the Northwest to nearly 800 people.

Death Toll Rises to 210 From February Cold Wave in Texas

upstart writes:

Death toll rises to 210 from February cold wave in Texas:

upstart writes:

China's Mars rover travels 450 meters on red planet - Xinhua:

China's Mars rover travels 450 meters on red planet

BEIJING, July 15 (Xinhua) -- China's Mars rover Zhurong has traveled 450 meters on the surface of the red planet, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration on Thursday.

Since the rover landed on the surface of Mars, it has been traveling southward to conduct exploration and inspection activities.

[...] As of Thursday, Zhurong has been operating on the surface of Mars for 60 Martian days. A Martian day is approximately 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.

China's Tianwen-1 spacecraft, consisting of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, was launched on July 23, 2020. The lander carrying the rover touched down in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a vast plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars, on May 15.

NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars on 18 February 2021, 20:55 UTC and has traveled 1.44 km (0.89 mi) as of 9 July 2021.

Wikipedia entries for CNSA's Tianwen-1 and NASA's Perseverance.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Tel Aviv will test dog poop DNA to fine owners who don’t clean up:

Tel Aviv has found an innovative way of dealing with dog owners who don’t clean up after their pets in the city streets — testing the excrement’s DNA and sending a fine to the owner by mail.

The city council on Monday approved a motion setting up a DNA database and stating that dog owners will be required to submit their pets’ genetic details to authorities upon receiving or renewing a license, Hebrew-language media reported.

The validity of current dog licenses will expire six months after the new ruling takes effect, and new licenses won’t be approved unless owners give over the DNA details, the reports said.

The regulations won’t apply to guide dogs or to dogs kept by animal protection organizations.

[...] There were 6,766 calls and inquiries made to the city hall hotline over dog poop left in public spaces in 2020, according to the Ynet news site.

Original Submission

Always After Me Lucky Charms writes:

NortonLifeLock sniffs around Avast, announces 'advanced discussions' for acquisition:

NortonLifeLock, the somewhat clunky moniker adopted by the former consumer business arm of the Symantec Corporation, has announced "advanced discussions" with rival Avast over a possible merger.

"A combination of NortonLifeLock and Avast would bring together two companies with aligned visions, highly complementary business profiles and a joint commitment to innovation that helps protect and empower people to live their digital lives safely," a NortonLifeLock spokesperson claimed in a message to investors.

"We would draw on the best of both companies to ensure that the combination would benefit our customers, reward our employees and maximise long term value for all shareholders."

[...] Consumer security is precisely where Czech rival Avast has its sights set. Founded in 1988 by Eduard Kučera and Pavel Baudiš as Alwil and focusing on antivirus from the get-go - with Baudiš responsible for developing the first program to remove the Vienna virus from infected systems - the company has its own-brand security software and operates AVG Technologies, Piriform, and HMA as subsidiaries.

[...] The company's history is not untouched by controversy, however: its Avast- and AVG-branded browser extensions were dropped after they were found to be selling users' browsing histories to a third party, which the company promised to stop - only for an update to open a man-in-the-middle vulnerability in the Avast AntiTrack privacy tool.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Dozens killed as severe flooding hits Europe:

Up to 70 people are missing in Germany after flash floods swept across western and southern parts of the country, causing buildings to collapse, police said Thursday. Germany is worst hit with 49 people killed, while six people died in Belgium. Luxembourg and the Netherlands are also affected.

"In some areas we have not seen this much rainfall in 100 years," Andreas Friedrich, a German weather service spokesman, told CNN. He added that "in some areas we've seen more than double the amount of rainfall which has caused flooding and unfortunately some building structures to collapse."

At least 67 dead and hundreds missing as flooding rages across Germany and Belgium:

Devastating floods swept across a swath of Western Europe on Thursday, engulfing whole villages in raging muddy brown waters, overturning cars and killing at least 67 people and leaving more than 1,300 unaccounted for after a summer deluge at levels not seen in some areas for a century.

At least 58 people died in Germany, by far the worst-hit country, where whole villages were cut off from rescuers and helicopters were deployed to pluck the stranded off rooftops.Some houses were simply washed away as a tributary of the Rhine burst its banks.

Anti-aristarchus writes:

NASA is fixing a computer glitch on a giant telescope in space. That's just as hard as it sounds:

After more than a month of testing and trying, NASA's engineers have finally diagnosed the source of an ongoing glitch on Hubble, the 31-year-old giant telescope that is currently orbiting in space almost 600 kilometers away from Earth.

On 13th June, Hubble automatically placed all of its science instruments on standby as a security measure following the failure of the telescope's payload computer – one of the central systems that controls and coordinates the instruments onboard the spacecraft, and transmits science and engineering data to the ground.

[...] Although Hubble's team has now identified the PCU [(Power Control Unit)] as the source of the glitch, it is only the start of the fix. It is impossible to reset the component using ground commands, meaning that NASA's team will have to switch to the backup side of the SI C&D [(Science Instrument Command and Data Handling)] module that contains the backup PCU.

This is a complex and risky operation, because it is likely to impact several other hardware boxes on the spacecraft that are also connected to this particular side of the SI C&D module.

Steam Deck is Valve's Switch-like portable PC: Starting at $399 this December

Freeman writes:

Steam Deck is Valve's Switch-like portable PC, starting at $399 this December

On Thursday, Valve took the wraps off its new Switch-like portable PC, now dubbed the Steam Deck, confirming that it is indeed the hardware Ars Technica wrote about earlier this year. The device will begin shipping later this year at a starting price of $399.

The hefty-looking console, which is 11.7 inches long, will launch at three price points, differentiated by built-in storage capacity, SSD speed ratings, and differently tempered glass on its screen. Those particular upgrades will cost $529 (256GB) and $649 (512GB, "anti-glare etched glass"). Both pricier bundles include a carrying case.

Valve Announces the "Steam Deck", a Handheld Gaming PC

takyon writes:

Valve has announced a handheld gaming PC, the Steam Deck:

upstart writes:

may-they-panick-in-peace

Facebook Users Said No to Tracking -- Now Advertisers are Panicking:

When users get asked on iPhone devices if they'd like to be tracked, the vast majority say no. That's worrying Facebook Inc.'s advertisers, who are losing access to some of their most valuable targeting data and have already seen a decrease in effectiveness of their ads.

The new prompt from Apple Inc., which arrived in an iOS software update to iPhones in early June, explicitly asks users of each app whether they are willing to be tracked across their internet activity. Most are saying no, according to Branch, which analyzes mobile app growth. People are giving apps permission to track their behavior just 25% of the time, Branch found, severing a data pipeline that has powered the targeted advertising industry for years.

"It's been pretty devastating for I would say the majority of advertisers," said Eric Seufert, a mobile analyst who writes the Mobile Dev Memo trade blog. "The big question is: Are we seeing just short-term volatility where we can expect a move back to the mean, or is this a new normal?"

upstart writes:

Watch Robots Make Pizzas From Start to Finish at an Automated Pizzeria:

At Pazzi Pizzeria—or, as the owners are calling it, Pazziria—customers place their orders on screens at self-service terminals, then they can watch a team of robots working in concert to deliver up their pizza. In fact, the spectacle seems as important as the food; a sign outside the restaurant encourages passerby to "Come for the show, stay for the pizza."

The "show" starts with a robot grabbing a handful of dough and depositing it on a pan, where another bot flattens it, a third applies tomato sauce, etc. From dough-grabbing to inserting in the oven, preparing a pizza takes just 45 seconds. The oven can bake 6 pizzas at a time, yielding about 80 pizzas per hour. Once a pizza is baked to gooey perfection, a robot slices it and places it in a box, and it's then transferred (by a robot, of course) to a numbered cubby from which the customer can retrieve it.

It's a shame the pizzeria didn't open during the height of the pandemic, as its revenues likely would have gone through the roof given that there's zero person-to-person contact required for you to get a fresh, custom-made pizza in your hands (and more importantly, your belly!).

Pazzi's creators spent eight years researching and developing the pizza bots, and they say the hardest part was getting the bots to work effectively with the raw dough. Since it's made with yeast, the dough is sensitive to changes in temperature, humidity, and other factors, and for optimal results it needs to be rolled out and baked with very precise timing.

"It's a very fast process, the timing is perfectly controlled, and quality is assured because the robots are consistent," said Pazzi co-founder Sebastien Roverso. He added that engineers monitor the bots remotely, and if needed they can take control of them and fix any issues.

Pazzi has many pictures on their Press Page. There is also a promotional video on YouTube as well as a French-language reporter documenting her visit to Pazzi, also on YouTube.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

uBlock Origin (and uMatrix) DoS With Strict-Blocking Filter and Crafted URL (Archived).

uBlock Origin (uBO) is a browser extension that blocks ads, security risks, privacy risks, and other web annoyances. One of its features is "strict blocking," which prevents all connections—​including direct navigations—​to resources that match strict filters.

Strict filters are most often used to block sites that perform affiliate redirects, serve malware, or are otherwise undesirable to visit. They are typically applied at the domain level (e.g., googlesyndication.com) and tend to resemble entries in hosts files, though they can also target more specific resources.

Strict blocking works by opening a warning page that provides information about the blocked resource, including its URL and the filter that prevented the resource from loading. The warning page also displays query parameters from the blocked URL to help users bypass redirect tracking.

In earlier versions of uBO, these parameters were parsed recursively and added to the DOM without any depth checks, which could lead to extension crashes and memory exhaustion, depending on the browser and hardware. uMatrix and ηMatrix, a fork of uMatrix compatible with Pale Moon, share similar code for displaying parsed URL parameters.

Users should upgrade to uBO 1.36.2 and ηMatrix 4.4.9 to receive fixes for this security vulnerability, which affects the default configurations of both extensions. The uBO Edge extension and the uBO (Legacy) extension have separate release processes and are still vulnerable.

The story source url has Discussion, Vulnerability [Code], Impact and scope, PoCs and so forth.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Russia To Build RISC-V Processors for Laptops: 8-core, 2 GHz, 12nm, 2025

Russian outlet Vedomosti.ru today is reporting that the conglomerate Rostec, a Russian state-backed corporation specializing in investment in technology, has penned a deal with server company Yadro and silicon design company Sintakor to develop RISC-V processors for computers, laptops, and servers. Initial reports are suggesting that Sintakor will develop a powerful enough RISC-V design to power government and education systems by 2025.

The cost of the project is reported to be around 30 billion rubles ($400m), with that the organizers of the project plan to sell 60,000 systems based around new processors containing RISC-V cores as the main processing cores. The reports state that the goal is to build an 8-core processor, running at 2 GHz, using a 12-nanometer process, which presumably means GlobalFoundries but at this point it is unclear. Out of the project funding, two-thirds will be provided by 'anchor customers' (such as Rostec and subsidiaries), while the final third will come from the federal budget. The systems these processors will go into will operate initially at Russia's Ministry of Education and Science, as well as the Ministry of Health.

Previously: Russian Homegrown Elbrus-4C CPU Released
Linux-Based, MIPS-Powered Russian All-in-One PC Launched
Programming Guide for Russia's "28nm" Elbrus-8CB CPU Published

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Pesticide caused kids' brain damage, California lawsuits say:

Lawsuits filed Monday in California seek potential class-action damages from Dow Chemical and its successor company over a widely used bug killer linked to brain damage in children.

Chlorpyrifos is approved for use on more than 80 crops, including oranges, berries, grapes, soybeans, almonds and walnuts, though California banned sales of the pesticide last year and spraying of it this year. Some other states, including New York, have moved to ban it. Stuart Calwell, lead attorney in the lawsuits, argued that its effects linger in Central Valley agricultural communities contaminated by chlorpyrifos during decades of use, with measurable levels still found in his clients' homes.

Lawyers project that at least 100,000 homes in the nation's largest agricultural state may need to dispose of most of their belongings because they are contaminated with the pesticide. "We have found it in the houses, we have found it in carpet, in upholstered furniture, we found it in a teddy bear, and we found it on the walls and surfaces," Calwell said. "Then a little child picks up a teddy bear and holds on to it."

[...] Corteva stopped producing the pesticide last year. The Delaware-based company was created after a merger of Dow Chemical and Dupont and had been the world's largest manufacturer of chlorpyrifos. The company has said it believes the product is safe and said it stopped production because of declining sales.

Scientific studies have shown that chlorpyrifos damages the brains of fetuses and children. It was first used in 1965 but was banned for household use in 2001.

More information on Chlorpyrifos at Wikipedia and EPA.

Original Submission